«Le Ombre (The Shadows) is a series of drawings and paintings that are characterized by a free technique and evocative, dark and symbolist content. They are a sort of b side of my main path in painting and drawing, more accurate and detailed.»

Detalle de la obra anterior realizada por encargo / Detail of the previos work by commision

"Tamas"

Alessandro Sicioldr is an italian painter and illustrator born in 1990 in Tarquinia, living in Perugia. He works mainly with oil paint, pencils and coloured pencils. His subjects are surreal images coming from unconscious that he represents using a blend of contemporary and traditional techniques. His visionary attitude began to sprout in early childhood, when he used to depict in his drawings strange and uncanny worlds. These early manifestations brought a scared kindergarten teacher to call his parents, asking for an exorcism. He studied and worked under his father's guidance in his classical painting atelier where he learned not only how to paint but how to prepare wood with Cennino Cennini's technique, how to mix and grind pigments and how to build and decorate custom frames. In 2014 he moved to his personal atelier. His inspirations often comes from his dreamy visions and from studies of art history, psychology, mythology, philosophy, literature and science

«I wake up every morning and paint until it’s evening. I also walk a lot by the sea or by the lake with my girlfriend. Everything would seem quite normal from the outside, this is because inner evolutions and experiences are subtle, not manifest. What happens under the surface of normality is what really makes the difference. Dreams, visions, fantasies and obsessions have been with me since my early childhood, and I sublimate them through art.»

«My visions are just images floating in the stream of consciousnesses, and I suppose everyone has them. My only capacity is to recognize when an image is important and fix it. Initially they are just quick impressions and I sketch them in one of my sketchbooks. This is the moment where the image has the greatest power in me. The painting or the drawing is a sacralisation of an idea, but the real idea lies in the sketchbook.»

«Being educated by a psychologist and artist like my father contributed enormously to my art. He taught me to recognize inner realities and to live a deeper life, but without losing contact with reality. Moreover he influenced (indirectly) my artistic tastes through the paintings on the walls of our home and through visits to museums.»

«Wunderkammer (Cabinet of Curiosities) is a series of "Tavole" (Tables) that describes in a scientific form contents coming from unconscious. A spontaneous plant-and-animal kingdom living in the abyss of mind.»

«My paintings are not allegorical and I’m not aware of symbols in the early stages. I just feel that some images have an important meaning and I paint them. Only then do I begin to read their ambiguous meanings and interpretations. My works are like dreams (even though I usually don’t limit myself to paint representations of dreams), they come spontaneously and they need to be interpreted.»

«In my opinion every piece of art should aim to universality, because it has to speak to the highest part of humanity, which is universal. The only thing that changes is the language an artist will use to express themselves.»

«I’m not following a style or a fashion, I just want complete freedom of expression, and I don’t know (and don’t care) if my style will result in coherence. You can see works full of a human-vegetable chaos, cocoons with humans inside, as well as you can see simple and minimal portraits. If my personality and my soul is always changing and evolving why should my art be monolithic and coherent?»

Alessandro has done this work as a tribute to the eponymous painting by Franz von Stuck. I take this opportunity to review the different versions made by German painter with the themes of sin and sensuality, represented by a snake wrapped around the body of a beautiful woman.

Now widely considered to be an icon of the Symbolist art movement, Franz Stuck's Die Sünde (The Sin) drew large crowds even when it was first exhibited at the premiere exhibition of the Munich Secession in 1893, an association of artists which Stuck had co-founded a year before. First conceived in 1889 as Die Sinnlichkeit (Sensuality) (private collection), subsequent versions show subtle variations and evolve into the current composition, Stuck’s grand meditation on sin. Including the present work, twelve versions of the painting are now known, a testament to the image's fame and notoriety, and many of these are in public collections such as the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Galleria di arte Moderna in Palermo, the Frye Museum in Seattle, and another remains enshrined as an icon in his Künstleraltar in the artist’s studio at the Villa Stuck in Munich (fig. 1), an elaborate home entirely of his design; his Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art.

Here Stuck has taken the story of the temptation of Eve and condensed it to its three most essential parts, omitting any extraneous narrative elements such as the garden, the apple or Adam. In this poignant imagining, he presents only Eve, emerging naked out of a darkness, the body of the massive snake coiled around her, and a sulphurous light or flame in the upper right. Perhaps this fire references Eve’s damnation and hell, but just as likely it is an allusion to the knowledge of good and evil which has been bestowed upon her by Lucifer, a figure that Stuck exhibited to shocking effect in 1891 and who is known also as the “morning star” or “light bringer” (see below). Incidentally, it is also the space in which Stuck consistently, and prominently, signs his name.

The impact that the painting had on contemporary audiences cannot be overstated. It was enormously popular, and quickly purchased by the Neue Pinakothek in Munich where it was installed immediately. Stuck rightly saw it as a pivotal moment in his career, writing that “from then on the way was open for me. Now all my pictures sold” (as quoted in Edwin Becker, Franz von Stuck, 1863-1928: Eros and Pathos, exh. cat., Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 1995, p. 18).

Following the Munich Secession and unveiling at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, Die Sünde acquired celebrity status and was reproduced widely, even used in an early-twentieth century advertisement for mouthwash. It is often cited as an inspiration of Edvard Munch’s Madonna (see below)

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